we scored another seminar for early next year with the guys from NxtGenUG

Simon and I will do another whirlwind tour of the Blend tools, wiring up the C# to make it all dynamic

Sign up and come see us in action

http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=176

Hope to see you there, we're booked for Janurary 19th so plenty of time to get signed up

Back to the land of browser inconsistencies :¬(

I had such high hopes for the silverlight plug-in.  Cross-browser incompatablities can be the most time consuming areas of web development, so a browser plug-in overcomes these by sandboxing the application so it handles all of it's rendering internally

Or so I thought.  Having developed all my silverlight under Internet Explorer, everything renders fine with the default 100% heights and widths.  Rendering the controls is important for templated controls and the loaded event only fires when the control is rendered and the loaded event is important in order for the control to pipe up and accept some data from the dartabinding process. 

To my amazement, and slight relief, Firefox actually requires a fixed height in order for it to render.  By default, you are given a silverlight plugin, set to 100% height and width, wrapped in a div with a height : 100% style attribute.  Just change the containing div to a fixed height and your controls now render fine in Firefox :¬)

so from this

to this

<asp:Silverlight ID="Xaml1" runat="server" Source="~/ClientBin/NavTeqBannerMain.xap" MinimumVersion="2.0.31005.0" Width="100%" Height="100%" InitParameters="ctlid=SilverLightBanner" />

</div>

For those trying to make headway into Silverlight, there is a lot of old knowledge which needs to be gained in order for silverlight to become productive. 

For Flash-heads, there simply isn't enough material about to make a judgement about which one to use.  Based on in-house experience, and the fact that people won't have previous Silverlight experience (it was only released on the 14th October), Flash is tried and tested

Then along comes Project Rosetta with a 10 lesson how-to on comparing some old Flash-staples to new Silverlight techniques, code for both versions and working demos to boot!!

The new silverlight tools can now be accessed using the FREE Visual Web Developer edition of Visual Studio 2008, and there's trial version of Blend if you want to your Draw on :¬)

Enjoy

Tim

Finally it happens!

Silverlight is released, to much fanfare. After anticipating this release in the Creativer Jar Studio for over a year, it's very exciting news!

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Silverlight2IsOut.aspx

http://www.liveside.net/main/archive/2008/10/13/microsoft-releases-silverlight-2-on-tuesday-oct-14.aspx 

Of course - check out our own Silverlight Portfolio http://silverlight.creative-jar.com/ 

Silverlight is already installed on a quarter of PC's. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/oct08/10-13Silverlight2PR.mspx

Creative Jar are pleased to present our Silverlight Labs - http://silverlight.creative-jar.com, this area of the CJ site feature and showcase our Silverlight development over the coming months... so watch this space!

Dont forget to see us at VBUG tonight - http://www.vbug.co.uk/Events/August-2008/VBUG-Bracknell-Creating-Silverlight-apps-using-Blend-and-VS08.aspx

WOW - MOSS meets Silverlight and one hell of a blog system, check out http://blogs.msdn.com/imm/

The future is here!

Embedding custom fonts into your Silverlight Application couldn't be easier. This video is downloaded from http://channel9.msdn.com/ 

Two days after the VBug presentation,  Simon and I have been asked to do a similar presentation at the Conchango offices in London

Promises to be a high-profile event with a good mix of developers and designers attending

 http://blogs.conchango.com/michelleflynn/archive/2008/07/21/uk-silverlight-user-group-date-confirmed.aspx

It's happening on the 14th of August and they're still filling designer spots.  Pop Michelle an email if you're a designer and wish to attend :¬)

Plenty of the CJ team will be there

Microsoft have just created a case study detailing our winning competition entry for the 'Be all you can be challenge'

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000002403

Nice to be featured on Microsoft.com, big props to all involved :¬)

Some very interesting presentations from the Mix 08 session earlier this year. From developer presentations to best work practices.

The videos are the full session presentations, so can last for at least an hour.

http://sessions.visitmix.com/